FORCING PROGRESS: THE STRUGGLE TO INTEGRATE SOUTHERN EPISCOPAL SCHOOLS A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of The School of Continuing Studies and of The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Liberal Studies By Wade H. Morris, Jr., B.A. Georgetown University Washington, D.C. April 18, 2009 FORCING PROGRESS: THE STRUGGLE TO INTEGRATE SOUTHERN EPISCOPAL SCHOOLS Wade H. Morris, Jr., B.A. Mentor: William F. McDonald, Ph.D. ABSTRACT In 1955, the Episcopal Church challenged its congregants to stand up to an unjust social norm. In that year, the Episcopal Church called for the racial desegregation of Episcopal institutions: parishes, seminaries, and schools. Did Episcopalians live up to this challenge? Did the Episcopal Church translate its stated ideals into the harsher world of reality? Nowhere are these questions more clearly answered than with the integration of Episcopal schools. The story of Episcopal school integration provides a microcosm for the Episcopal Church’s effectiveness in persuading its laity (school trustees, parents, and alumni) to live up to Episcopalian ideals of social justice. This thesis examines the integration of seven Episcopal schools in the American South. The schools were chosen because each had a different relationship with the Episcopal Church. The available resources pertaining to integration varied from school to school. Board minutes, letters from parents, letters between administrators and trustees, newspaper articles, annual school reports, memoirs of school heads, and interviews all help answer an essential question: to what extent did the Episcopal Church (bishops, deans, rectors, and clergy serving as school administrators) push for integration? ii The research produced a consistent theme across each of the seven schools: the closer the ties that the school had to the Church, the more quickly the school integrated. The greater the influence that parents and alumni had over the schools, the more likely the school was to fight integration. Paradoxically, in order to affect change, schools needed to first and foremost be independent from parents and alumni, but the schools relied on parents and alumni for funding. The question of integration, therefore, forced a choice upon school administrators and trustees between financial strength and theological consistency. The Episcopal Church served and continues to serve an important role. It checks the power of parents. It provides schools with a mission greater than the self- interests of parents and the nostalgic self-preservation of alumni. Ultimately, the experience of Episcopal schools during integration reaffirms the importance of independent schools remaining independent, not from the Church, but from their own clientele. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to the Heads of the seven schools in this thesis for allowing me to see the available resources and for taking the time to answer my many questions: Vance Wilson from St. Albans, Joan Holden from St. Stephen’s & St. Agnes, Billy Peebles from Lovett, Bill Wade from St. Andrew’s-Sewanee, George Penick from St. Andrew’s (MS), Phil Hadley from Virginia Episcopal School, and Rob Hershey from Episcopal High School. I am indebted to school archivists for taking the time to pull materials and for preserving the history of their schools: Marta Dunetz and Dianne Hewlett, Anne Bolen, Patti Hughes, Sandra Ross, and Laura Vetter. My thanks for the gracious hospitality of a number of people who organized and hosted my visits to their school: Kim Henderson from the Church Schools in the Diocese of Virginia, Ashley Lichtenstein and Andy Spencer from Lovett, Mimi Bradley at St. Andrew’s (MS), Faye Rickets, Margaret Matens, and Lizzie Duncan from St. Andrew’s-Sewanee, Dolly Clark from VES, and Elizabeth Watts from EHS. Thanks to all the people who agreed to be interviewed for this project: Tony Lewis, Jim Sibley, James McDowell, Joseph Wise, Betsy Copeland, Duncan Gray, Jr., John Stone Jenkins, Louis Hayden, Peggy Martin, Bill Stetson, Bobby Watts, and Daniel Heischman. Thank you to William F. McDonald, my mentor, for his steady instruction. A special thanks to my parents, Hampton and Carter Morris, for not only for their editing skills but also for their support and enthusiasm. Above all, thank you, Megan Kota Morris. iv TO MEGAN v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………..ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………iv INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………….........1 Chapter I. WHITE FLIGHT AND OPPOSITION TO INTEGRATION………….12 II. THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH’S PUSH FOR INTEGRATION………..39 III. LEADERSHIP AND CHANGE IN EPISCOPAL SCHOOLS………...81 IV. PARENTAL ANXIETY AND THE NEW CHALLENGE…………..112 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………….133 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………….137 vi INTRODUCTION Parents must be made to realize that no strong school can be operated by a Board of Trustees which is at the mercy of the majority of parents… We have insisted that the schools belong to the Church and not to the parents. - John Page Williams, July 16, 1963 At times, organized religion perpetuates unjust social norms. At others, religious institutions challenge their members to stand up against such injustices. In 1955, the Episcopal Church offered such a challenge to its congregants. In that year, the Episcopal Church called for the racial desegregation of Episcopal institutions: parishes, seminaries, and schools. Did Episcopalians live up to this challenge? Did the Episcopal Church translate its stated ideals into the harsher world of reality? Nowhere are these questions more clearly answered than with the integration of Episcopal schools. The story of Episcopal school integration provides a microcosm for the Episcopal Church’s effectiveness in persuading its laity (school trustees, parents, and alumni) to live up to Episcopalian ideals of social justice. The Episcopal Church was born in the wake of the American Revolution. The war left American congregants of the Church of England without a church hierarchy or a system of funding. From 1782 to 1789, American Anglican priests met in Philadelphia to organize the theology and governance of a new Protestant Episcopal Church.1 Doctrinally, the Episcopal Church remained as close to the Church of 1 Rev. Cannon James R. Gundrum, “Understood Authority or Ecclesiastical Chaos,” The Executive Offices of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, http://www.episcopalchurch .org/13299_19957_ENG_HTM.htm?menu=menu5210, (accessed January 26, 2009 ) 1. 1 England as possible. In 1789, the Episcopal Church released its own Book of Common Prayer that, except for removing prayers for the King, followed nearly the same liturgy as its Anglican predecessor.2 In terms of governance, the Episcopal Church gave congregants the authority to elect their own vestry, who in turn could choose their own rectors. But the Episcopal Church added new layers of authority, dividing the United States into dioceses. Diocesan conventions made up of clergy and laity chose each bishop, who in turn served for life or until retirement. The 1780’s produced yet another layer of authority of the Episcopal Church. Every three years, the Church held a General Convention, which had the power to establish official theology and pass Church resolutions. The founders of the Episcopal Church divided this General Convention into two chambers: the House of Bishops, which consisted of all living Episcopal bishops, and the House of Deputies, made up of four clergy and four laity from each diocese.3 Finally, the Church created a Presiding Bishop, elected by the General Convention for nine year terms. The Presiding Bishop’s power was and is limited to developing Church policy and “speaking God’s word to the church and to the world.” 4 A historian of the Episcopal Church joked that “those who drafted the Constitution of the United States walked across the street and drafted the Constitution 2 Charles Hefling and Cynthia Shattuck, eds., The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 177. 3 Gundrum, “Understood Authority or Ecclesiastical Chaos,” 6-13. 4 Presiding Bishop, The Episcopal Church, www.episcopalchurch.org, (accessed January 26, 2009). 2 of the Episcopal Church.”5 The General Convention is obviously modeled after Constitutional Convention’s bicameral legislature. Like the U.S. government, the Episcopal Church has a system of federalism. The dioceses within the Episcopal Church are, to a large degree, autonomous. The central governing body (the General Convention) does not choose bishops, just as the federal government does not select state government officials. Yet authority can overlap between the dioceses and the General Convention. Institutions within the Church do not always comply with the General Convention’s resolutions. Within this tension, between central authority and local autonomy, the story of Episcopal school integration plays out. The tension between the Episcopal Church’s stance on racial justice and its schools began just a few months after Brown v. Board of Education. In June 1954, a 28-year-old Episcopal priest in Mississippi, Duncan M. Gray, Jr., authored the first Episcopal Diocesan response to the court-ordered desegregation of public schools. He did so under the authority of the Bishop of Mississippi, who also happened to be his father. “The Court’s ruling is more than a matter of law and order, it has to do with the will of God and the welfare and destiny of human